This book explores the year 1971, when two exhibitions opened that brought modernist painting and sculpture into the burning heart of United States cultural politics: Contemporary Black Artists in ...
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This book explores the year 1971, when two exhibitions opened that brought modernist painting and sculpture into the burning heart of United States cultural politics: Contemporary Black Artists in America, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and The DeLuxe Show, a racially integrated abstract art exhibition presented in a renovated movie theater in a Houston ghetto. The book looks at many black artists' desire to gain freedom from overt racial representation, as well as their efforts—and those of their advocates—to further that aim through public exhibition. Amid calls to define a “black aesthetic,” these experiments with modernist art prioritized cultural interaction and instability. Contemporary Black Artists in America highlighted abstraction as a stance against normative approaches, while The DeLuxe Show positioned abstraction in a center of urban blight. The importance of these experiments, the book argues, came partly from color's special status as a cultural symbol and partly from investigations of color already under way in late modern art and criticism. With their supporters, black modernists—among them Peter Bradley, Frederick Eversley, Alvin Loving, Raymond Saunders, and Alma Thomas—rose above the demand to represent or be represented, compromising nothing in their appeals for interracial collaboration and, above all, responding with optimism rather than cynicism to the surrounding culture's preoccupation with color.Less

1971 : A Year in the Life of Color

Darby English

Published in print: 2016-12-20

This book explores the year 1971, when two exhibitions opened that brought modernist painting and sculpture into the burning heart of United States cultural politics: Contemporary Black Artists in America, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and The DeLuxe Show, a racially integrated abstract art exhibition presented in a renovated movie theater in a Houston ghetto. The book looks at many black artists' desire to gain freedom from overt racial representation, as well as their efforts—and those of their advocates—to further that aim through public exhibition. Amid calls to define a “black aesthetic,” these experiments with modernist art prioritized cultural interaction and instability. Contemporary Black Artists in America highlighted abstraction as a stance against normative approaches, while The DeLuxe Show positioned abstraction in a center of urban blight. The importance of these experiments, the book argues, came partly from color's special status as a cultural symbol and partly from investigations of color already under way in late modern art and criticism. With their supporters, black modernists—among them Peter Bradley, Frederick Eversley, Alvin Loving, Raymond Saunders, and Alma Thomas—rose above the demand to represent or be represented, compromising nothing in their appeals for interracial collaboration and, above all, responding with optimism rather than cynicism to the surrounding culture's preoccupation with color.

Art historians have long looked to letters to secure biographical information, affirm patronage patterns, and establish the identity of an artist as a modern, self-aware individual. But letters are ...
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Art historians have long looked to letters to secure biographical information, affirm patronage patterns, and establish the identity of an artist as a modern, self-aware individual. But letters are also objects that endure episodes of travel, and are sometimes rerouted to reach readerships that far exceed the scope of their initial intent. As agents of communication, letters are uniquely poised to provide analogies for how works of art address their audiences. In a period before the establishment of a reliable public postal system, handwritten correspondences faced interception and delay. The printing press threatened to expose intimate exchanges, disturbing relationships of privacy to publicity. These risks sharpened during the volatile years of the Reformation. Summoning evidence of the complicated travel patterns of sixteenth-century missives, Brisman argues that uncertainties surrounding the sending and receiving of letters shaped how Germany’s most famous artist conceived of the communicative efficacies of the work of art. Albrecht Dürer’s success was due in large part, she argues, to his development of pictorial strategies that lure the mind of the distanced beholder. Balancing intimacy with publicity and immediacy with delay, Dürer’s images mimic the letter’s ability to connect author and recipient through dialectics of advertisement and concealment.Less

Albrecht Dürer and the Epistolary Mode of Address

Shira Brisman

Published in print: 2017-01-20

Art historians have long looked to letters to secure biographical information, affirm patronage patterns, and establish the identity of an artist as a modern, self-aware individual. But letters are also objects that endure episodes of travel, and are sometimes rerouted to reach readerships that far exceed the scope of their initial intent. As agents of communication, letters are uniquely poised to provide analogies for how works of art address their audiences. In a period before the establishment of a reliable public postal system, handwritten correspondences faced interception and delay. The printing press threatened to expose intimate exchanges, disturbing relationships of privacy to publicity. These risks sharpened during the volatile years of the Reformation. Summoning evidence of the complicated travel patterns of sixteenth-century missives, Brisman argues that uncertainties surrounding the sending and receiving of letters shaped how Germany’s most famous artist conceived of the communicative efficacies of the work of art. Albrecht Dürer’s success was due in large part, she argues, to his development of pictorial strategies that lure the mind of the distanced beholder. Balancing intimacy with publicity and immediacy with delay, Dürer’s images mimic the letter’s ability to connect author and recipient through dialectics of advertisement and concealment.

This book focuses on the work of several artists, mostly photographers and mostly born in the 1970s. Their age matters because they have lived their entire lives in a world in which aesthetic ...
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This book focuses on the work of several artists, mostly photographers and mostly born in the 1970s. Their age matters because they have lived their entire lives in a world in which aesthetic ambition has been mainly identified with a certain critique of form and meaning (call it postmodernism) and in which the struggle between capital and labor has been mainly won by capital (call it neoliberalism). This book argues that these aesthetic and political conditions are connected, that, for example, the ongoing hostility to the idea of the autonomy of the work of art is related to the ongoing inability to understand what it means for the productivity of labor to rise while its share of income falls. More precisely, the book is about the way in which the critique of form makes the very difference between labor and capital-–the difference of class-–invisible, and about the ways in which the new formal ambitions of the works analyzed here invoke as well a new set of political ambitions. What these artists give us is not quite a class politics but, more important for art, a class aesthetic.Less

The Beauty of a Social Problem : Photography, Autonomy, Economy

Walter Benn Michaels

Published in print: 2015-07-13

This book focuses on the work of several artists, mostly photographers and mostly born in the 1970s. Their age matters because they have lived their entire lives in a world in which aesthetic ambition has been mainly identified with a certain critique of form and meaning (call it postmodernism) and in which the struggle between capital and labor has been mainly won by capital (call it neoliberalism). This book argues that these aesthetic and political conditions are connected, that, for example, the ongoing hostility to the idea of the autonomy of the work of art is related to the ongoing inability to understand what it means for the productivity of labor to rise while its share of income falls. More precisely, the book is about the way in which the critique of form makes the very difference between labor and capital-–the difference of class-–invisible, and about the ways in which the new formal ambitions of the works analyzed here invoke as well a new set of political ambitions. What these artists give us is not quite a class politics but, more important for art, a class aesthetic.

This book examines the significance of traumatic experiences both in the individual lives and works of artists and in contemporary international cultures since World War II. The book considers some ...
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This book examines the significance of traumatic experiences both in the individual lives and works of artists and in contemporary international cultures since World War II. The book considers some of the most notorious art of the second half of the twentieth century by artists who use their bodies to address destruction and violence. The chapters in this book focus primarily on performance art and photography. From war and environmental pollution to racism and sexual assault, the book analyzes the consequences of trauma as seen in the works of artists like Marina Abramovic, Pope.L, and Chris Burden. Assembling rich intellectual explorations on everything from Paleolithic paintings to the Bible's patriarchal legacies to documentary images of nuclear explosions, the book explores how art can provide a distinctive means of understanding trauma and promote individual and collective healing.Less

Concerning Consequences : Studies in Art, Destruction, and Trauma

Kristine Stiles

Published in print: 2016-03-21

This book examines the significance of traumatic experiences both in the individual lives and works of artists and in contemporary international cultures since World War II. The book considers some of the most notorious art of the second half of the twentieth century by artists who use their bodies to address destruction and violence. The chapters in this book focus primarily on performance art and photography. From war and environmental pollution to racism and sexual assault, the book analyzes the consequences of trauma as seen in the works of artists like Marina Abramovic, Pope.L, and Chris Burden. Assembling rich intellectual explorations on everything from Paleolithic paintings to the Bible's patriarchal legacies to documentary images of nuclear explosions, the book explores how art can provide a distinctive means of understanding trauma and promote individual and collective healing.

This book traces the history of “kinaesthetic knowing,” a form of knowledge associated with the movements of the body, in Imperial Germany. The figures that play central roles in the book invented ...
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This book traces the history of “kinaesthetic knowing,” a form of knowledge associated with the movements of the body, in Imperial Germany. The figures that play central roles in the book invented new pedagogical techniques with the conviction that there existed a non-discursive, non-conceptual way of knowing that could nonetheless compete in its rigour with reasoning realized through language, concepts, or logic. In doing so, they drew on the findings of the new discipline of experimental psychology. The book is structured around four techniques: a practice of comparative looking in which the eye was assumed to draw its own conclusions independently of the mind; a method of beholding that prioritized automatic and affective response rather than intellectual contemplation; a manner of drawing that abandoned the principles of imitation and composition and gave free rein to the movements of the body; and, finally, the practice of designing, a constellation of artistic techniques whose goal was to manipulate form, line, colour, and space rather than follow academic rules regarding orders, proportions, and composition. Some went so far as to argue that this alternative epistemological principle could become the basis of the human sciences at large. The faith in the epistemological value of kinaesthesia was short-lived but proved crucial: it was upon the foundation of this other way of knowing that many concepts and practices central to twentieth-century modernism were established. Primary amongst them was the formalist thrust of modern design education.Less

Kinaesthetic Knowing : Aesthetics, Epistemology, Modern Design

Zeynep Çelik Alexander

Published in print: 2017-12-08

This book traces the history of “kinaesthetic knowing,” a form of knowledge associated with the movements of the body, in Imperial Germany. The figures that play central roles in the book invented new pedagogical techniques with the conviction that there existed a non-discursive, non-conceptual way of knowing that could nonetheless compete in its rigour with reasoning realized through language, concepts, or logic. In doing so, they drew on the findings of the new discipline of experimental psychology. The book is structured around four techniques: a practice of comparative looking in which the eye was assumed to draw its own conclusions independently of the mind; a method of beholding that prioritized automatic and affective response rather than intellectual contemplation; a manner of drawing that abandoned the principles of imitation and composition and gave free rein to the movements of the body; and, finally, the practice of designing, a constellation of artistic techniques whose goal was to manipulate form, line, colour, and space rather than follow academic rules regarding orders, proportions, and composition. Some went so far as to argue that this alternative epistemological principle could become the basis of the human sciences at large. The faith in the epistemological value of kinaesthesia was short-lived but proved crucial: it was upon the foundation of this other way of knowing that many concepts and practices central to twentieth-century modernism were established. Primary amongst them was the formalist thrust of modern design education.

A thematic and gendered history of post-war American ceramics, this book focuses on three American women ceramists, Marguerite Wildenhain (1896-1985), a Bauhaus-trained potter who taught form as ...
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A thematic and gendered history of post-war American ceramics, this book focuses on three American women ceramists, Marguerite Wildenhain (1896-1985), a Bauhaus-trained potter who taught form as process without product at her summer craft school Pond Farm; Mary Caroline (M.C.) Richards (1916-1999), who renounced formalism at Black Mountain College in favor of a therapeutic model she pursued outside academia; and Susan Peterson (1925-2009), who popularized ceramics through live throwing demonstrations on public television in 1964-65. These artists utilized ceramics as a conduit for social contact through teaching, writing, and the performance of their medium. At mid-century, functional pottery was more than just an art form, it was a lifestyle, offering mid-century women extraordinary autonomy, both economically and socially, through experimental artistic communities that were collective in nature. Ceramics offers a compelling site for examining the sexism and media hierarchies embedded in modernist art histories. It became a viable alternative to the mainstream, urban art worlds of New York City and Los Angeles, a space in which women could innovate, teach, and create lasting pedagogical structures. This unorthodox, largely rural livelihood was beholden to the formal requirements of the craft: the making, storage, and firing of ceramic wares. The medium itself was ill-suited to an urban setting: strict fire codes made kilns illegal in most cities. Pottery’s emphasis on self-sufficient rural living offered proto-feminist women the opportunity to live and teach in cooperative, experimental, and self-initiated communities.Less

Live Form : Women, Ceramics, and Community

Jenni Sorkin

Published in print: 2016-07-26

A thematic and gendered history of post-war American ceramics, this book focuses on three American women ceramists, Marguerite Wildenhain (1896-1985), a Bauhaus-trained potter who taught form as process without product at her summer craft school Pond Farm; Mary Caroline (M.C.) Richards (1916-1999), who renounced formalism at Black Mountain College in favor of a therapeutic model she pursued outside academia; and Susan Peterson (1925-2009), who popularized ceramics through live throwing demonstrations on public television in 1964-65. These artists utilized ceramics as a conduit for social contact through teaching, writing, and the performance of their medium. At mid-century, functional pottery was more than just an art form, it was a lifestyle, offering mid-century women extraordinary autonomy, both economically and socially, through experimental artistic communities that were collective in nature. Ceramics offers a compelling site for examining the sexism and media hierarchies embedded in modernist art histories. It became a viable alternative to the mainstream, urban art worlds of New York City and Los Angeles, a space in which women could innovate, teach, and create lasting pedagogical structures. This unorthodox, largely rural livelihood was beholden to the formal requirements of the craft: the making, storage, and firing of ceramic wares. The medium itself was ill-suited to an urban setting: strict fire codes made kilns illegal in most cities. Pottery’s emphasis on self-sufficient rural living offered proto-feminist women the opportunity to live and teach in cooperative, experimental, and self-initiated communities.

Photography as a medium is often associated with the psychic effects of trauma. The automaticity of the process, the wide open camera lens, and the light sensitivity of film all lend themselves to ...
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Photography as a medium is often associated with the psychic effects of trauma. The automaticity of the process, the wide open camera lens, and the light sensitivity of film all lend themselves to this association. Just as a photograph registers things that to some extent bypass artistic intention and convention, so also the event that precipitates a trauma bypasses consciousness leaving an indexical trace on the psyche. Both involve the chance exposure to something which leaves an indelible impression. This book is an exploration of artists and theorists who have thought of photography as somehow analogous to trauma. It also considers art in other media, especially those sculptural forms, like direct casts, that can readily be understood as presenting or simulating a trace or residue of a traumatic event. Chapters are devoted to indexicality, analogue photography and film, direct casting, rubbing, the graphic trace, and representing the “unrepresentable.” Contesting the rise of digitization, the art under consideration claims some referential weight and meaning but, like trauma, only indirectly, belatedly.Less

Photography, Trace, and Trauma

Margaret Iversen

Published in print: 2017-02-27

Photography as a medium is often associated with the psychic effects of trauma. The automaticity of the process, the wide open camera lens, and the light sensitivity of film all lend themselves to this association. Just as a photograph registers things that to some extent bypass artistic intention and convention, so also the event that precipitates a trauma bypasses consciousness leaving an indexical trace on the psyche. Both involve the chance exposure to something which leaves an indelible impression. This book is an exploration of artists and theorists who have thought of photography as somehow analogous to trauma. It also considers art in other media, especially those sculptural forms, like direct casts, that can readily be understood as presenting or simulating a trace or residue of a traumatic event. Chapters are devoted to indexicality, analogue photography and film, direct casting, rubbing, the graphic trace, and representing the “unrepresentable.” Contesting the rise of digitization, the art under consideration claims some referential weight and meaning but, like trauma, only indirectly, belatedly.

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